Logo Sketches

I'm working with Executive Director Melanie Sobel to create a new logo for the Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission. Melanie made some wonderful changes in her years at Chicago Animal Care & Control, implementing progressive programs that helped change their mission,philosophy and culture. Animal placement increased by nearly 150%, and animal euthanasia decreased by nearly 20%. She is hoping to bring some of these programs to MADACC. She is very dedicated and I'm honored to be working with her again on this project that we hope will give a more friendly and warm image to this institution which down the road we hope will adopt out it's strays.These were my initial designs...too whimsical and busy for a logo so I went back to the 'drawing board'. Stay tuned to see which direction we went.

Playing tourist in my own town...

Three of my high school girl friends from Sparta came to visit over the weekend...it was fun catching up and hearing about life back home. We spent Saturday as tourists doing the Chicago Trolley Double Decker Bus Tour...a pretty good deal: For $25, you get a narrated historical tour of downtown with many optional stops at all the tourist spots. It was a gorgeous day and we were all enjoying the sunshine on our faces after such a long winter! I got some good photos that I hope to use in upcoming cityscape paintings...Chicago is such a beautiful city and I don't get down to the loop very often. Hard to believe I used to do it every day for work. You can see more  of my Chicago shots on my  Flickr page.

Artist Found...

Back in 2005, Rich & I took a magical little 5 day trip to New York City. It was featured in my very first blog entry. What made it magical is that we let the trip take us, not really planning just having fun and unexpected adventures. Among them, renting and riding bicycles through Central Park, going to a Broadway Show with Half Price Tickets, going to see the band Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum ...my first experience in a non-smoking club..it was great! Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge...an awesome experience and my highlight, going to the DUMBO art event in Brooklyn where in addition to seeing and buying some fabulous art I also surprised one of my sculpture pals from college whose studio was listed in the program. We had not seen each other in 15 years. So after all that...the reason for this post and the image above: yesterday while perusing etsy in the shop local arena, I keyed in Brooklyn and came upon Faune Yerby, the artist who I had purchased this wonderful photo collage from. I didn't have any info on her or her full name so I was so really glad to find her...it is a small world. (Image: my kitchen sink/window sill art gallery, piece on the left by my friend Cathi Bouzide, on the right a Marquette I made for one of my clay sculptures).

Website Updates!

Several times of year I seriously think about hiring a web designer,but then time slips away and I just continue morphing this monster Icreated so many years ago! That's what I did this week:

• I added my newly completed painting "65 South" to my front page. I love this painting and am now ready to let go of 12 Acres if the right buyer comes along.
• Reworked many of my Custom Dog & Pet Portrait Order pages: Starting with the Sketch Process Page, I used Brutus as a case study.
• Updated and simplified the Face Portrait and the Full Body Custom Canvas Painting order forms.I still have to figure out how to get a downloadable pdf on my site. The dangers of doing everything yourself. The other problem I can't update my leftside menu frame, it'sm making me crazy.
• Uploaded my Mission Statement page...I recently completed a longer version for a potential licensing deal and have meant to post this on my website forever. I just want people to adopt and not buy animals, if they really new the statistics I think they would adopt. Speaking of: I heard Oprah is doing a show on puppy mills tomorrow...I am so happy about this, people need to know. She could in this one hour show change the lives of thousands of homeless pets (I'm hoping in addition to getting these mills shut down that they make the point to encourage people to go their local shelters to adopt instead of buying dogs). We'll see how it all plays out tomorrow.
• Updated my Animal Inspiration page - added a few more recent photos to the very old ones.
• Updated my listing to show recently SOLD pieces...always a joy to do!

Trucks & Planes

   

I clicked a few photos of trucks that I'm working on at Lill Street. Sadly an hour before I took the wet clay photo I lost a cab from another truck, lopped right off onto the floor into many  pieces. Very frustrating...you just have to let go when it comes to clay. It's fragile and unpredictable but also really therapeutic and so much fun to play around with. This white truck is actually underglaze on bisqued (that means fired once) terra cotta ..it was bright orange before I slopped on the white.I do this so when I add the color I can get brighter hues.  It is going to be a milk truck..to go with the egg truck. The first one is my crazy version of a cement truck..that was my Monday night.

And I got my plane back last week. I included strategically placed holes, the plan is to thread wire through andhang it from the ceiling. I also made clouds but they still need to beglazed.

Sunday...back track

I'm backtracking a bit with this post. On Sunday I had lunch with my friend
Johanna in China Town (dim sum!), got to see her ubercool new loft, then
stopped by her fiancee's studio (master furniture maker Mark Cwik) to get
some reclaimed lumber...if I can call it that? perhaps recycled, re-used?
They were scrap pieces he could not use. I can't wait to paint on them.
Here is a photo of one of his beautiful Bubinga Tables (no this is not the
kind of wood I'm painting on):

After picking up my boards I delivered my print (top image): "Dreaming
Uphill" to Woman Made Gallery for their April 12th Art Auction. Then
came home and got creative in the kitchen with a new recipe. I did a
Butternut Squash / Hazelnut Lasagne. The recipe was passed on to me
from my art pal & jeweler, Sara Lenart. You can find the recipe at
epicurious.com It was pretty tasty,I felt guilty not inviting anyone over
to share it with us!

Art Business News

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I was very happy to find my booth shot from the One of a Kind Show featured in the Picture Gallery section of the March 08 Issue of Art Business News Magazine! This is a national trade journal for the art, publishing & framing industries.

Lips Locked

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We are doing some spring cleaning in my studio. I have some really fun black & white prints of drawings I've done over the years...many created while sitting in my booth at Art Fairs...over the next week we will be listing many of these prints in my etsy store...this one is called Lips Locked.

Oh...and I had a change of heart about the blog being called Anne's Candy Colored World...not descriptive enough...I'm going with my signature tag line "Contemporary Folk & Urban Pop Art". But it still works perfectly for the everyday category.